The most surreal noir thriller of the year just landed on Hulu — and it will stick with you for days

Tom's Guide

a day ago

If you're a fan of Hollywood, you probably watched "The Studio," Apple's critically acclaimed comedy about the movie-making business. But if you're a fan of the noir genre, you were probably disappointed by the show's least successful episode.
Smack dab in the middle of "The Studio," the series shifts gears and becomes a shadowy thriller in which Seth Rogen's bumbling studio head attempts to track down a stolen film reel. The episode was a tonal misfire, a rare blip in an otherwise near-perfect season of television and a bummer to anyone whose favorite movie is "Double Indemnity," "Chinatown" or any other noir classic.
But to paraphrase a famous Bible verse, when Hollywood takes away, it also gives. And in this case, that gift comes in the form of "The Actor," an indie noir about the dark side of show business that just made its streaming debut on Hulu.
"The Actor" is everything that "The Studio's" noir detour failed to be: a taut, trippy, and fiercely authentic thriller that blurs the lines of cinema and reality until they're completely unrecognizable.
"The Actor" is the kind of movie that's best watched knowing as little as possible, but if you insist, I'll give you a brief overview.
Paul Cole (André Holland) is an actor traveling with a theater troupe who decides to sleep with a married woman while on the road. After the husband gives him a brutal beating, Paul winds up with amnesia and gets stranded somewhere in the Midwest.
Without enough money to get back home to New York , he takes a $5 bus to a mysterious town and finds a job at the local factory. He also meets a beguiling woman (Gemma Chan) and begins to fall in love.
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In the movie's meaty second act, an old playbill triggers Paul's memory just enough to dislodge his New York address. He heads home, but soon learns some disturbing truths about the man he once was.
After struggling to revive his acting career — his utter failure to deliver a single line for a minor role on live television leads to the movie's most stressful moment — Paul attempts to make his way back to a town and a woman he can barely remember.
"The Actor" isn't so much a movie about the business of acting as it is a warning about the perils of the profession.
Even without the amnesia, Paul lives a sad and depressing life. When he arrives in New York, he learns he was juggling several girlfriends, all of whom seem to hate him. His old friends aren't much better, goading Paul into telling offensive jokes and snickering at him behind his back.
It's only when Paul abandons that career for a job in a factory that he seems to find some measure of happiness.
But while "The Actor" is surprisingly short on scenes about acting, its promise of noir storytelling comes through in every frame. Filmed on a soundstage in Budapest, where director Duke Johnson could control each tiny variable, the movie is bathed in moody shadows and shades of grey. The music, dialogue, and direction come together to perfectly recreate the feeling of a femme fatale mystery. There's no hesitation or winking at the audience, just pure commitment to this high-concept cinematic vision.
At the center of the film is André Holland, who appears in nearly every scene and beautifully conveys the experience of a man drifting through life with no memories of his past.
Paul is somehow both perpetually lost and unnaturally confident, as if amnesia robbed him not just of his life story but of his anxiety, too. It's hard to imagine anyone else in the role (although, fun fact: Ryan Gosling was originally set to star before dropping out for scheduling reasons).
Holland's performance alone is enough to anchor "The Actor," but the rest of the cast isn't slacking either. It's clear everyone involved is fully devoted to both the noir aesthetic that envelopes the film like cigarette smoke, and the Hollywood critique at its core. Each scene and each line feels pulled straight out of some lost 1940s thriller.
It just goes to show what's possible when you decide on a bit and stick to it.
Stream "The Actor" on Hulu